Category: Purim

A number of weeks ago I was enamored at a Pixar-like take on a Jewish Bible Story, Megillas Esther. Titled Megillas Lester, the story focuses on a frum Jewish boy, Doniel Lesterovitch (“Lester”) who attends a fictional Torah Academy (Torah…

Reprinted from the Diarna Project and MyJewishLearning. According to the biblical book named after her, Esther was a beautiful young Jewish woman who caught the eye of the Persian King Ahasuerus, became queen, and with the assistance of her uncle Mordecai,…

The following is a letter from R’ Aharon Lein Shteinman regarding getting drunk on Purim. The gist of it is that Purim is an Es Ratzon, a moment of extreme need, and that from the Zohar Yom HaKippurim (Yom Kippur)…

Reprinted from OnTheMainLine: These are two pieces that ran a week apart in the New York Herald (Tribune) in March of 1841. They describe Purim before, and after. The quality of them is not the greatest, so I also typed…

Recently Arutz Sheva published an article stating that President Barack Obama’s Jewish half-brother Mark Ndesandjo, born to Obama’s father’s Jewish wife, met with the Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi of Israel Yona Metzger and agreed to intervene on behalf of Jonathan Pollard.

Mr. Ndesandjo, whose name I can’t pronounce if my life depended on it, showed up with a Yarmulke perched on his forehead along with his trademark bandana on his head.

To say that this looks like a case of Mordechai from the story of Purim would be an understatement. In many ways I feel privileged to living in this generation and witnessing so many miracles and potential ones.

Lots of people think that Hamantaschen, the delectable Purim cookie, comes from Haman’s hat, or rather his ears. As many people in Israel like to call it: Oznei Haman (Haman’s ears). However, not too many people know this, but the original HamanTaschen word stems from nowhere near Haman.

It was for a long time traditional to eat poppy seeds on Purim in honor of Esther who ate seeds over pork, as well as Hasach (a.k.a. Daniel) who years before also ate only vegetables (poppy seeds too) in order to avoid eating Treif at the kings’ table.

Therefore, people would make these poppy seed cookie pockets. Poppyseeds in Yiddish were called “Mun” and pockets were “Taschen.” Hence people ate “MunTaschen.” Over the years though Haman-taschen was introduced due to the similarity in how it sounds.

To say the least, the recent earthquake in Japan was nothing short of horrifying and a testament to the power of the One Above. In Accounting when categorizing damages related to nature they are listed as “Acts of God,” as nothing else can describe it.

It was scary. The earthquake destroyed over a hundred kilometers of land in Japan, which considering the country’s size is a lot of land. Then the earthquake led to a major tsunami.